Speaking in an interview with Axios, EA Sports general manager Daryl Holt said that in the next five years, EA Sports is looking to expand its audience to 500 million players, more than double the current figure, and that it plans to do that by expanding into “new business models, new geographies.” The company is looking to deliver “a sustained offering of sports gaming content to players around the clock,” according to Axios’ report.

“We’re creating very much a social aspect and social networks within our games,” says Holt.

As for NBA, EA brought the NBA Live line of games to a halt in 2019, stating back then that it was working on a rework of the franchise, and Holt says that work is continuing. “We’ve got some next-generation HD basketball projects that we have been talking about and designing and working on,” he said.

Meanwhile, with Konami recently having rebranded its long-running Pro Evolution Soccer series as eFootball, an ongoing free-to-play live service platform, could EA adopt that approach with its own annual franchises anytime soon? Holt says that though the annual release cycles for these games isn’t going to be dropped anytime soon, EA is still going to keep an eye on that business model to see if it can be adopted in the future.

“I think it is an evolution that is happening around the gaming industry in different ways,” he said. “How we unlock the big beat of sports into that type of a service, I think we’ll see over the course of the future.”

While FIFA, Madden NFL, NHL, and UFC games continue to be successful for EA Sports, the company is looking to expand and improve in other areas as well. With the recent acquisition of Codemasters, F1 has, of course, been brought under the EA Sports label, while EA’s recent acquisition of mobile games developer Playdemic also signifies the company’s intent to drive growth in the mobile space.

Studio Liverpool was, at one point, was Sony’s oldest and most relied on first party development company. The studio produced hit games such as the F1 , G-Police, Colony Wares, and WipeOut. The company’s success is what made for such a shock when Sony shut them down following the release of the PS Vita game, Little Deviants.

However, according to IGN, a new studio named Firesprite has been formed and is comprised of former employees of Studio Liverpool.

“Firesprite came about organically, but we all had a shared vision. The founding team met up socially after Studio Liverpool and we talked about all the things we had achieved over the years, the platform launches, the variety of games, going back to the Psygnosis days and through to F1 and WipEout. We knew we wanted to carry on making great games,” Managing Director Graeme Ankers revealed.

He continued to comment on the Firesprite team:

“Over the years, we worked with some of the best games content creators and quickly built a team of 20 people, 15 of which had been on the journey with us through the years at Studio Liverpool. It’s an energetic mix of experience and new talent.”

It will be interesting to see what PlayStation 4 and PS Vita games will come out of this latest combination.

When F1 2013 was revealed, a lot of jaws dropped at how stunning it looked. It looked stunning and realistic, and simply put, the graphics got a lot of attention. Ahead of the game’s release, the developers decided to spill the beans on a lot of things in a bare-all interview with GamingBolt. This included the graphics.

‘We have a new Art Director in the team and have also lost HRT from the grid enabling us to free up some much needed memory,’ said Paul Jean, Game Director on F1 2013. ‘Both of these factors have enabled us to push the visuals still further.

‘We have a new lighting solution which has really bought the tracks and garages to life but the main advance for me has to be the car models. We have changed the way we create the cars so now the textures are much higher, meaning that they are much clearer when you are close up. This in turn has allowed us more flexibility when it comes to things such as camera placement for replays.’

He also talked about the much talked about decision to include the Classics mode in the upcoming game.

‘Classic content is comfortably the most requested feature we have ever had, whether that’s from press or fans of the sport. People want to recreate races they saw when they were growing up and to drive as their former heroes in iconic cars.

‘With this in mind it has been something that we’ve wanted to do since we signed the F1 license in 2008 but it has been a very complicated process and it has taken a long time to secure the relevant licenses. Many of the teams have changed ownership several times in the intervening years, some no longer exist. There are issues with sponsorship and liveries as we cannot show alcohol or cigarette sponsor for example.

‘Our licensing team has done an amazing job to secure the content that they have for F1 2013 but we see this as very much the start point for us and classic content,’ he signed off, possibly hinting at growth in scope and potential for the mode in the coming years.

Ubisoft has registered a domain for a new title, Fighter Within, but has not yet put any content on the web page. All it reads the ominous words, “Coming Soon.” They have teased a new IP for GamesCom so may be this is the new game after all.

Ubisoft has been around in dome from or another since the mid 1980’s, and has produced a massive catalogue of games in their 25+ years in the industry, with 26 studios in 19 countries across the globe.

If we take a quick look at the amazing catalogue of games Ubisoft has produced over the course of its expansive career, from the F1 series, to Rayman, to Prince of Persia, to Far Cry, to Assassin’s Creed… The list goes on. These are some of the most massively successful franchises in the history of gaming. With such a rich history of positive results behind them, our hopes are as high as the bar they have set for themselves in the past with the upcoming Fighter Within.

Stay tuned to Gamingbolt for updates, reveals, teasers and trailers on the next Ubisoft release.

Via: Ubisoft